


Gatherer

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 22:33:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/958357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>castiel finds a honeybee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gatherer

“What the fuck is that?”

It is small, and black-orange striped. Long bodied, smooth. It crawls contentedly over Castiel’s outstretched fingers; weaves over the webbing between index and thumb, tiny legs stretched out, and black; wings folded. Dean has appeared on the porch, beside him. Castiel didn’t even hear him come over.

“A honeybee,” he replies, and when he looks up at Dean, his expression is twisted. “What?”

“There aren’t any bees,” Dean replies, softly, staring at the insect on Castiel’s hand. Castiel raises his eyebrows.

“I beg to differ,” he says, moving his hand slightly – enough to indicate the bee, not to dislodge it. Dean is still frowning.

“They died out, Cas. Fucking… like a year ago, now.”

Castiel nods. “I heard,” but he moves his hand again and the bee – far from dead – continues to crawl all over the back of his palm, twitching its wings reflexively. He’d found it on one of the bannisters of the porch, and had coaxed it onto his fingers. He wonders if it’s still able to fly.

Dean stares at the bee for a moment or two more, then shakes his head as if to dislodge the thought. “We need you in a meeting in two hours. You good?”

Castiel turns away from the bee to look at Dean mildly. “I’ll be there.”

“Great. Cool. Make sure you are.”

Castiel snorts after him as Dean turns and goes down the steps, walking away. He leans back in his chair; lifts his feet, and sets them on top of the railings that run around the porch in front of his cabin. He keeps the bee on his hand; lets it trail its body over his wrist, his knuckles; weave between his fingers. It doesn’t seem to want to leave; either that, or it can’t.

***

He decides to keep it; he gets it sugar-water, cuts holes in an old plastic container to give it air. Dean sees it when he comes to the cabin that night. He’s going through his usual ritual, shedding his clothes whilst trying to look like they’re not actually going to have sex, and he’s toeing off one of his boots when he spots the bee, though he simply looks at it, then looks at Castiel, and says nothing.

Moments after that, Castiel has pushed him down on the bed and Dean is too distracted by the mouth breathing hot through his jeans, on his cock, to ask questions about the single, quiet honeybee. He lets Castiel peel the clothes from his body; Castiel laughs at him, bites his earlobe, pinches the underside of his thigh.

Time moves differently, when they’re together. One moment Castiel is counting the seconds until a meeting is over, is living eternities in between Dean’s sentences, and then he is trapped in a blur, a whirlwind, as he pushes Dean’s wrists down against the bed; as he lifts himself up and buries Dean inside him; settles, rises up, pushes down again.

It seems over so quickly and yet it rolls on forever; he could build a cathedral in the time it takes Dean to come inside him, and yet when they are done - when Castiel is lazily sucking bright, red-purple bruises on the sun-neglected planes of Dean’s inner thighs - it has been minutes, moments, only. Tiny little scrapes of time.

Dean leans back against the pillows when Castiel pays him this attention; grunts a little, when Castiel bites him particularly hard. He spits over the side of the bed, onto the floor, and hisses through his teeth; tangles a hand in Castiel’s hair.

“You taste different these days,” he murmurs, absently. Castiel makes a noise in response.

“Good different?”

“Like shit.”

Castiel laughs, mouth pressed to the tendon that stands out from Dean’s groin; a long, tensed cord of muscle. He worries it with his teeth, and Dean squirms. “Well, _thanks,_ Dean, I’m sorry. You think your spunk tastes like lemonade?”

Dean treats him to a rare huff of laughter in response. “Fuck you,” he snorts, “I’m just saying. It’s different.”

“Yeah, well, I eat food now.”

“That’s not all you eat.”

Castiel bites him a little harder; laves over the indents of his teeth, and sucks. “True.”

Dean hums, shifting his legs a little, but Castiel won’t let him go until he’s done. “That thing’ll die if you keep it in here, y’know.”

He’s talking about the bee, and Castiel doesn’t bother raising his eyes to look at Dean. “I want to breed them.”

“Can’t breed him with himself.”

“If there’s one, Dean, there might be others. Maybe the reports were wrong. Besides, why do you assume he’s male? It might be a queen.”

“Doubt it.”

They fall silent, mostly; the sound trickles down to the soft, damp movements of Castiel’s lips and teeth on Dean’s flesh; the twitching of Dean’s legs when he finds somewhere particularly sensitive, and leaves behind another bruise.

Eventually, Castiel crawls up to sit beside him. “I think I could find another one. Maybe we could have a hive, and honey.”

“You’re not stupid, Cas. You know there’s none left.”

Castiel looks at him, and anger flares through him at the sight of Dean’s cool, disinterested gaze being trained on the bee. “I don’t know that, and neither do you. I bet there’s more.”

Dean stares at him incredulously, then rolls out of the bed and gets to his feet. He pads around, looking for his jeans, and Castiel plays with his soft cock as he watches him, legs spread wide on the bed, propped up on his pillows. “You’re going?” he asks, and Dean looks at him as if it’s an afterthought.

“Yeah. Early day tomorrow.”

Castiel frowns, but doesn’t stop him. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Sure.”

Dean stumbles out of the cabin; Castiel allows himself a small, satisfied smile when he realises Dean is walking even more bowlegged than usual.

He lies on his bed, lazily palming himself as sunlight starts to filter through the windows of the cabin; as it lays itself in drunken lines over the plain wood planks of the floor. He looks at the plastic box where the bee is, and knows that what Dean said was true; there are no more bees, and he’s fairly sure even this one can’t fly. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with it, only that it made him sad to look at; that he wanted to keep it safe, somehow.

***

He keeps it, despite Dean’s insistence. Feeds it small amounts of sugar water, carefully siphoned from his own food allowances. In the morning, before they go out on a job, Castiel refills its bottle-cap water-dish, and wishes it well for the day. He leaves it on his bedside table, hoping that he can look at it before bed the night after, watch its gently undulating wings.

The run, the job, is a bigger deal than he’d realised; Dean leads, and barely glances at Castiel. The only indication that this Dean is the one he knows and not some mirror-version, some alternate, is that when he stands with his legs too close together, he winces.

They go into another abandoned city, unrecognisable even as a city. They’re a group of ten or twelve, and Dean divides them up; into food-gatherers, medical supply teams. Castiel is used to being his right hand man, but this time he is ousted for Risa, who is a better shot.

He goes with the medical team instead, and though they run into a fair number of Croats – half a dozen, mostly children – it goes smoothly. Laden with supplies, they go back to the cars to wait for the rest of the team.

Dean and Risa are the last to return, hours late. Castiel sits in the front cab of Dean’s jeep, though they hadn’t travelled there together. When Dean finally swings into the driver’s seat, he has to actively restrain himself from slapping his face.

“What happened?”

Dean looks at him, and shrugs. “Nothing big. Got stuck.”

“What were you doing?”

Dean doesn’t answer.

“Did you bring anything good back?”

Again, no response. The journey home is silent, but for the sound of Dean’s breathing, and the wind whirling past Castiel’s open, passenger-side window.

Later that night, Castiel learns two things; first, that Dean met a demon in that ruined town, who gave him news of his brother. Who told him that Sam really _did_ say yes.

Second, he finds the honeybee; dead, shrivelled to half its original size. Left in the sun too long, it had simply given up; stiffened, on its side, into a dry, neat little furl.

He realises with a shock that there are no more of them; that this was the last, and he killed it.

He picks it out of the container and throws the container, and the water, away.

He leaves the honeybee on his bedside table, right in his eye line, and curls on his side on top of the bedsheets, breathing shallow, shallow breaths. Unsurprisingly, Dean does not appear at his side.

He thinks of all the flowers that will now be left to wither; of all the new things that will never, ever thrive.

He falls asleep to the sound of dry grass outside; soft shush-shushing, like the ocean, or the dregs of a storm. Like a great voice telling him to be silent; saying _it will be over, and soon_.  


End file.
